This coin was very difficult to interpret because of the depiction of the male figure, nude, with parazonium, very tall upper part of the body, but it suggests Themistokles. There is another rare type of him sacrificing before an altar, where he is similarily depicted. Themistokles is the famous hero of Salamis who had to flee from Athens after an ostrakismos. His former enemy, the Persian king Artaxerxes I, accommodated him and made him satrap of Lampsakos and Magnesia ad Maeandrum due to his merits at Salamis.

“The first city one comes to after Ephesos is Magnesia, which is an Aiolian city . . . In the present city is the temple of Artemis Leukophryene, which in the size of its shrine and in the number of its votive offerings is inferior to the temple at Ephesos, but in the harmony and skill shown in the structure of the sacred enclosure is far superior to it. And in size it surpasses all the sacred enclosures in Asia except two, that at Ephesos (to Artemis) and that at Didymoi (to Apollo)” (Strabo, Geography 14. 1. 40).

Apart from the Paris specimen published by Mionnet, the only other published example of the type, though with a different placement of the reverse legend, appeared in the Weber Coll. (J. Hirsch XXIV, 5/1909), lot 2880, with the reverse illustrated on pl. XXXIX of the catalog.1 comments

Schultz lists only one copy in Berlin. This type is important in showing production of defense articles of metal in Magnesia, with a major guild of blacksmiths in town. See J. Nollé, Athena in the forge of Hephaestus, JNG 45, 1995, 51-77.

The letter delta on the obverse is the denomination mark and stands for four diobols or an octobol (smaller pieces valued at two and four obols are also known). These coins were primarily for local use at the time when the city produced its extensive issues of stephanophoric tetradrachms.

The weight and type of this piece clearly place it among the Persic standard didrachms detailed by Kinns, all of which are very rare. What is also significant about this piece is the addition of a monogram on the obverse, and the magistrate, who is unattested for all of the denominations during this period.

From the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, II, Sotheby & Co. Zurich, 4 April 1973, 568, J. Ward and the Earl of Ashburnham, SWH 6 May 1896, 183. While Magnesia struck a wide variety of denominations in its horseman/bull series, Rhodian weight drachms seem to be inordinately rare: only ten are known, all of different magistrates.

The style and fabric of the coin are consistent with the coinage of Ionia in the mid-late 4th century BC. The Apollo / bull butting types are common at Magnesia, but the absence of any maeander pattern casts doubt upon an attribution to that city. There are rare gold issues with these types at Samos (cf. Barron pl. XXX, 14-5), but it is unlikely that this is a previously unknown silver issue from that mint.